


Multiples of Five

by breadandchoc



Category: V for Vendetta (2005), V for Vendetta - All Media Types
Genre: Experimental Style, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 00:33:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4766831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breadandchoc/pseuds/breadandchoc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[collection] Things come in fives for V and Evey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 5 things Evey secretly believes about V

**5 things Evey secretly believes about V**

 

5.

He's really quite mad. No, seriously. In the sanest, most diligently methodical sort of way possible. Throw in moral hypocrisy and ideological tyranny and really, the only thing that really separates him from Sutler is the causality figures.

(And of course, the matter of Whose Side Are You Really On, but England, _please._ That was really only a matter of the lesser of two evils, wasn't it?)

4.

He was not really in love with her. He loved her, yes, but  _in love?_ Deeply, uncomplicatedly, without illusion or theatrical narration? Probably not. Probably in love with her as the idea of love, as the symbol of the people, as something nobler and larger than she is—as the glimpse of an impossible future, as the woman she  _could_ be, whatever— it doesn't matter. What is a handful of sparse months? Shakespeare was an idealist. Juliet died of a broken heart. And as for V—

Well. Let it not be said that anarchists aren't the purest of idealists. And Evey has always been a survivor.

3.

Yes, he needed to die; yes, she understands  _that_  at least— after months under the care of a man whose presence can eclipse reality, it becomes a struggle to doubt any way other than his; Evey cannot imagine a future with V still alive in it, it hurts her head and heart but god,  _V—_ and yet, yet... (she still mixes up her tenses when thinking about him, still thinks of him in terms of companion and ghost, and that is perhaps the only thing she might never forgive: that she is caught between history and legacy, and V has once again left her in the present)

2.

Even if presented the situation, no matter how incriminating the evidence, V would never get jealous. Partly because partly because there is no 'they' to begin with; mostly, because that is just how their love is: trust thick enough to strangle, to redeem, to transform hope into duty.

1.

Everything she thinks about him is never completely true.


	2. 5 things V would like to do to Evey in bed

**5 things V would like to do to Evey in bed**

 

5.

Interesting things involving blindfolds and silk cloths and velvet petals and certain gloves and— well, you get the picture.

4.

To confess the love letters of the ages in the secret curves of her body: whisper Donne into her neck, murmur Browning in the aftermath, and against her salt of her skin, mouth Bronte, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, the Bard, cummings— _in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me/ or which i cannot touch because they are too near…_

Wordplay is the foreplay of the gods, after all.

3.

Keep her in bed for a much longer time with the help of good champagne, because that always makes her ruthlessly and coquettishly wicked.

...Actually, make that a much,  _much_ longer time.

2.

Kiss her: on her collarbone, along the delicate curve of her right shoulder, that weak underside of her wrists, in the slight hollow under her rib when she arches up, the soft spot above her hipbone beneath his thumb, right there. He will have to settle for brushing that fragile hollow under her left ankle or Evey will start to suspect, and V is not- will  _not-_  apologizing. Not for her faded bruises of an interrogation ago; he is  _fine._

1.

It involves a paintbrush. And no canvas.


	3. 5 Movies that remind Evey of V

**5 Movies that remind Evey of V**

 

5.

A book that Evey has always wanted to see onscreen: The Phantom of the Opera.

The first time she asked V for it, he'd done a double-take, hemmed and hawed for a while, then smoothly and regretfully explained he seemed to have misplaced it some time back and no, Evey, this has nothing to do with the mask—or cloak, or killings, and no, not even the 'dramatic background music jig', thank you very much Evey, no. Which is a perfectly believable excuse in a place where the film industry lines the walls except that V has always been a perfectionist organizer and they both know it.

(Current plan to get it: innocently calling him the 'Angel of Music' every time he plays the jukebox or piano. She has just promised him to stop when the film is 'found', and expects to find it on her bed within the hour.)

4.

Finch is the first man Evey meets who doesn't quake, make the sign against evil, or froth at the mouth at the mention of V. For a girl deprived of the relief of coffee-break gossip for several months now, this immunity is an excellent trait.

"So where's the Zorro wannabe?" is the first gruff thing he asks when she finds him at their agreed spot. Evey is delighted.

"The revolution is ours now, Mr. Finch," she says brightly, falling in step with him. "But enough about that. Let's goss—I mean, let's talk about masked vigilantes and their impossible romanticism with flashy blades now, shall we?"

3.

"But isn't it interesti-"

"No."

"But just one more time-"

"No."

"But he's going to say it anytime now—wait, here it is..."

"Evey…"

"…and he's taking off the shades... your cue, your cue—say it!  _'I'm going to_ enjoy _watching you_ -'"

"For the love of god, Evey, we were almost at the fight scene! I'm not going to say  _Mr. Anderson_  that way again so- stop- rewinding!"

2.

"-and then we talked about other movies we enjoyed before the blacklisting and the meeting was wrapped up pretty soon after that."

A pause.

"...Let me just... clarify. You spent an afternoon with Finch—"

"—in a very, very serious cultural committee meeting—"

"—discussing my similarities to a fictional semi-psychotic lover of consumable artistry."

"… It was also a very dull session. And Finch said the whole ruthless obsession and insane-sanity thing going on clinched it, but I-"

"Dear god."

"Well, if it helps, we chose the older version-"

"Please stop, Evey, please..."

"-because I remembered he quotes outrageously as well. And he's funny." A pause. "Cheer up, V. Willy Wonka isn't all _that_  bad."

1.

The Count of Monte Cristo, always. Some days, she curls up on the couch with the lights turned amber-dim and smiles at the ending, that sweet heart-warming romance. Others, she flicks it off before that unreachable tree, and thinks of V and blood-roses and rain.

She has always pitied Mercedes.


	4. 5 times V and Evey never kissed

**5 times V and Evey never kissed**

 

5.

Of course— before Evey left, in front of Valerie's memorial.

The roses had made the air heavy with their scent, rich and dizzying. She'd been angry enough to want to hurt him; she'd been conscious enough to want to thank him.

Kissing him would have done both.

4.

During the waltz of Evey's return, her breathing like the countdown of his heart. It is a terrible thing, to fall in love all over again— with the guarded curve of her jaw, the uncertain fierceness of her fingers between his, the quiet clarity in her eyes. It is that knowing, those eyes, that stop him in time.

3.

Before V's fight, by his train of explosives. It was meant to be a kiss, simple as history; the mask made it just another argument lost.

2.

Roses again, heartache again. Evey had been drunk on its perfume and grief too incomprehensible to be wept, and so only Valerie saw when she pressed the heart of a Scarlet Carson to her lips.

It tasted of nothing.

1.

The roof of the Gallery, in his rain.


	5. 5 things V misses about Evey

**5 things V misses about Evey**

 

5.

Her hair. Tumble-loose coils cascading over her shoulders like dark honey, the pale smooth line of her neck peeking through whenever she bends over his gifts of books, of forbidden fruit. It had smelled faintly of apricots when he'd shaved her clean with the all indifference of a sheep-handler: Evey had clenched at a few stray strands gaspingly and he'd backhanded her for it, a vicious imprint of red on her scalp.

Eight months later, Evey shaves her own head and he does not dare ask.

4.

The way she trusted him with her cuts, her domestic wounds. Now she is more pragmatic, diamond-glitter of fatalism in her eyes—she still lets him smear ointments on the bruises patterning her back and her apathy is to the point of aggression, but it is in the way she holds her breath at his touch: it betrays them both.

3.

(Can't forget: her laughter)

2.

V had not realized how empty the Gallery thoroughly was—is, has been, will be— before Evey left, and is it impossible how something so small and conscientious can infuse every room with her presence. Even after two months (and one week, four days, nineteen hours, forty-seven minutes), he still finds traces in the most indiscriminate of places, like a series of faded dog-ears in a forgotten novel: a ripped pink button, the fingerprint smudging on the doorframe, a strand of hazel-smooth hair under the jukebox—their story in all its banal and fragile glory. Evey is everywhere in the same way air is everywhere to the drowning straggler: not enough, not where it truly matters.

(the button, the strand: carefully wrapped, in a box under her bed)

1.

It is better like this, of course, for her—for them both, but even so… sometimes—

The way Evey used to look at him, before.


End file.
